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New Hire in REL

We’re extremely pleased to announce that, as of August 2016, we will have another new colleague in REL.

Suma Ikeuchi is currently a doctoral candidate at Emory University, where she will receive her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology in May 2016. She also has an M.A. in Anthropology from Brandeis University and a B.A. in both History and Anthropology from Hokkaido University, Japan.

She primarily employs social theory and ethnographic methods to investigate how transnational migrant groups craft identities within larger cultural, historical, political, and religious contexts. Her current project, which was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, explores the interplay of national, ethno-racial, and religious identities among Japanese-Brazilians (i.e., people whose families left Japan for work in Brazil just a few generations ago) who are now native Portuguese speakers but who have themselves “return-migrated” to Japan and converted to Latin American Pentecostalism once there.

It was a very competitive search, with many strong applications, and so we’re extremely pleased to add Suma to the faculty — having her join us in what will be our 50th year. (More news later about what we’ve got planned to mark that anniversary.)

In the Fall semester she will teach an upper-level seminar in her specialty and we anticipate a wide variety of courses from her in the future, including a lower-level survey of Buddhism as well as courses on religion in the global south and even theories of ritual. Her focus on religion and identity formation in global regions not currently covered in REL makes her an ideal member of our team.